--- Francois Gouget fgouget@free.fr wrote:
On Thu, 28 Aug 2003, Alexandre Julliard wrote: [...]
Also once the config is in the registry it becomes inconvenient to modify by hand
[...]
That's one thing that bothers me with moving the configuration data to the registry: in the registry you cannot put comments that document what an option does. More precisely, comments are not preserved when wineserver saves the registry so adding comments is an exercise in futility.
The Unix way is to have text configuration files that are self-documented. Not all projects are born equal on this point of course, but look at squid.conf, smb.conf our even our own Wine configuration file for instance.
The Windows way is to have obscure binary parameters in the registry and force you to buy a dozen book to know what 1% of them are for. I.e. most of the options are completely undocumented.
I'm afraid moving the Wine configuration will move us towards the Windows model which is IMO not a model to follow.
Is there a way to use the registry (as seems to be required for many features) and still document our settings correctly? Maybe add a 'Doc' value for each regular value:
[SomeKey] OptionFoo=1 OptionFooDoc="OptionFoo does this, that, etc."
Better ideas?
Not sure how possible this is or if it has already been thought of just let me know, but what about loading the config into memory and having wine make it look like the registry while loaded (ie for windows regedit). wine can do the processing of both the registry and the config, and then when it is time to save the changes done in regedit, wine sorts it out between what needs to be written to the actual registry and what needs to be written to the config file. That way we have the registry, but we can keep the traditional unix (and all variants) plaintext config file, with documentation for the more advanced users, but if an end user wants to edit the config thru the registry, he can..
Of course winelib regedit should be modified to load the config file and make it look like standard registry keys as well, if it doesnt already, for the people willing to forego installing/copying a ms program (ie windows regedit) on their linux partitions.. lol
Comments/Flames/Suggestions?
===== -- Dustin Navea
Minor Contributor, http://www.winehq.com Bugzilla Janitor, http://bugs.winehq.com Network Admin, irc://irc.blynk.net (down)
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